Chào ông Viêt Nam

No fa ni una setmana que va morir Adrian Mitchell i avui, dia de Nadal, ens ha deixat Harold Pinter; tenia 78 anys. Premi Nobel de Literatura 2005, al que no va poder anar a recollir  per problemes de salut, però sí va assistir en l’acte de lliurament del premi Europa que també li van atorgar, a Torí, l’any 2006, i on va expressar el seu desig de : – ”veure com Europa s’enfronta als EE.UU. per canviar aquest poder establert després de la segona guerra mundial, per un nou ordre mundial”-.

El nostre Vilaweb ens informa avui de la seva mort amb molta informació i links.
Gran autor de teatre, guionista de cinema, poeta, no deixava mai de denunciar la ‘creixent cultura per amagar la veritat’. Els últims anys ha patit una salut física molt dolenta i ha estat hospitalitzat vàries vegades. En sortir de la’UCI d’un dels hospitals, encara va tenir esma per llegir el discurs d’acceptació del Premi Nobel; dur, molt dur, en contra el neoimperalisme agressiu nordamericà. Era conscient que aquest discurs podría molt bé ser el seu testament.
Va ser valent, molt valent, perque després de l’11 de setembre de 2001, Harold Pinter, es va allunyar del moviment de solidaritat amb els EE.UU. i va denunciar durament les seves culpes. Molts van creure que ja era vell, no sabía bé el que deia i que havía comès un error gravíssim.
Quan va recollir el Premi Europa, l’any 2006, ho va dir molt clar: ‘La guerra d’Irak ha fet canviar moltes coses al món’. Ara ja sap tothom fins a quin punt la tortura i la destrucció poden ser utilitzats per els EE.UU. després de la segona guerra mundial; Guantànamos, My Lais a Viêt Nam, Abu Ghraib a Irak, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Xile. No tot eren incidents casuals; les ordres sortíen directament de la Casa Blanca i de Downing Street 10.
L’any 2003 una noia jove, nordamericana, va ser atropellada i morta per un bulldozer israelita quan defensava la no demolició d’una casa palestina. Va escriure una obra de teatre que s’havia de representar a Nova York, però el mateix teatre la va censurar; tenia por que la considerissen ‘antisemita’ ..’ La veritat, pot considerar-se antisemita?es pregunta en Harold Pinter, fill d’un sastre jueu ‘.
Com autor, m’agrada una frase que va dir en una entrevista: – L’autor sempre és l’amo del text; no oblido mai que el llapis per canviar paraules, el tinc jo’.
Va escriure 30 obres dramàtiques, 24 guions de cinema, 57 assaigs, una novel.la, moltíssims articles i poemes. Ja no es veia amb forces per tornar a escriure una obra teatral. Va explicar: – No és una decisió final, però cada vegada m’interessa més la poesia’. Ja he escrit 30 obres de teatre, de veritat en fan falta més ?-
Una de les obres teatrals ‘ El nou ordre mundial’ – 1991 – dos torturadors parlen entre ells i comenten les tortures que han de començar a fer contra un detingut, que molt bé podria ser Guantànamo: – Per què plores ? li pregunta un torturador a l’altre. ‘M’agrada, m’agrada molt. Em sento pur, net. Això està molt bé, i saps per què ? Perque estàs purificant el món en nom de la democràcia”.  

Descansi en pau aquest home lluitador, gran escriptor, i que ens explicava com la veritat se’ns és amagada, no per els escriptors on les seves obres traspúen veritats, mentides, somnis, realitats, utopíes, fantasíes … per tots aquells politics i governs mediocres, cruels, que es creuen ser els amos de la veritat absoluta i volen establir aquest nou ordre mundial; qui són els bons i qui són els dolents. 

Ací teniu el discurs que va escriure quan se li va lliurar el Premi Nobel l’any 2005. És llarg, immens, crític, ben escrit, clar. Està en anglès, la seva llengua. Paga la pena recordar les seves paraules. Estàn escrites. Són veritat.

Harold Pinter: Art, Truth & Politics 

 

Nobel Lecture 

December 7, 2005 

 

In 1958 I wrote the following: 

‘There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between 

what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be 

both true and false.’ 

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of 

reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I 

must ask: What is true? What is false? 

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is 

compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. 

More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just 

glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without 

realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as 

one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, 

recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind 

to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it 

slips through your fingers and is lost. 

I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up 

my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what 

they did. 

Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often 

shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right 

out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me. 

The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is 

‘What have you done with the scissors?’ The first line of Old Times is ‘Dark.’ 

In each case I had no further information.  

In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors and was 

demanding their whereabouts of someone else he suspected had probably stolen them. 

But I somehow knew that the person addressed didn’t give a damn about the scissors or 

about the questioner either, for that matter.  

 ‘Dark’ I took to be a description of someone’s hair, the hair of a woman, and was the 

answer to a question. In each case I found myself compelled to pursue the matter. This 

happened visually, a very slow fade, through shadow into light.  

I always start a play by calling the characters A, B and C.  

 2 

In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a stark room and ask his 

question of a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa reading a racing paper. I somehow 

suspected that A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof. This was 

however confirmed a short time later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to 

become Max), ‘Dad, do you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you something. 

The dinner we had before, what was the name of it? What do you call it? Why don’t you 

buy a dog? You’re a dog cook. Honest. You think you’re cooking for a lot of dogs.’ So 

since B calls A ‘Dad’ it seemed to me reasonable to assume that they were father and 

son. A was also clearly the cook and his cooking did not seem to be held in high regard. 

Did this mean that there was no mother? I didn’t know. But, as I told myself at the time, 

our beginnings never know our ends.  

 ‘Dark.’ A large window. Evening sky. A man, A (later to become Deeley), and a 

woman, B (later to become Kate), sitting with drinks. ‘Fat or thin?’ the man asks. Who 

are they talking about? But I then see, standing at the window, a woman, C (later to 

become Anna), in another condition of light, her back to them, her hair dark. 

It’s a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have 

had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although 

sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author’s position is an odd one. In a 

sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy 

to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can’t dictate to them. To a 

certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man’s 

buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your 

hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of 

component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort. 

So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a 

frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time.  

But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it 

cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot. 

Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonising has to be 

avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe 

their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or 

disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of 

angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, 

perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they 

will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these 

precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function.  

 3 

In my play The Birthday Party I think I allow a whole range of options to operate in a 

dense forest of possibility before finally focussing on an act of subjugation.  

Mountain Language pretends to no such range of operation. It remains brutal, short and 

ugly. But the soldiers in the play do get some fun out of it. One sometimes forgets that 

torturers become easily bored. They need a bit of a laugh to keep their spirits up. This 

has been confirmed of course by the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain 

Language lasts only 20 minutes, but it could go on for hour after hour, on and on and 

on, the same pattern repeated over and over again, on and on, hour after hour.  

Ashes to Ashes, on the other hand, seems to me to be taking place under water. A 

drowning woman, her hand reaching up through the waves, dropping down out of sight, 

reaching for others, but finding nobody there, either above or under the water, finding 

only shadows, reflections, floating; the woman a lost figure in a drowning landscape, a 

woman unable to escape the doom that seemed to belong only to others. 

But as they died, she must die too.  

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory 

since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in 

truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is 

essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even 

the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon 

which we feed. 

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that 

Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, 

some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We 

were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship 

with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 

11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq 

threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.  

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States 

understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.  

But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I 

mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is 

obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, 

which is all that time will allow here.  

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe 

during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the 

 4 

ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and 

verified. 

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been 

superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone 

recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has 

considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain 

extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States’ actions throughout the 

world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked. 

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America’s favoured method. 

In the main, it has preferred what it has described as ‘low intensity conflict’. Low 

intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a 

bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that 

you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace 

has been subdued – or beaten to death – the same thing – and your own friends, the 

military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera 

and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in 

the years to which I refer. 

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a 

potent example of America’s view of its role in the world, both then and now.  

I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s. 

The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the 

Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a 

delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this 

delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz 

(then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: 

‘Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, 

a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra 

force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the 

cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal 

manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw 

its support from this shocking terrorist activity.’  

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly 

sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused 

and then spoke with some gravity. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘let me tell you something. In war, 

innocent people always suffer.’ There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did 

not flinch.  

 5 

Innocent people, indeed, always suffer. 

Finally somebody said: ‘But in this case “innocent people” were the victims of a 

gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If Congress allows 

the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the 

case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and 

destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?’ 

Seitz was imperturbable. ‘I don’t agree that the facts as presented support your 

assertions,’ he said.  

As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not 

reply. 

I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: 

‘The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.’ 

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 

years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a 

breathtaking popular revolution.  

The Sandinistas weren’t perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their 

political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were 

intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic 

society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken 

peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to 

land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced 

illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a 

free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.  

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the 

view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was 

allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to 

raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national 

self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do the same 

things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.  

I spoke earlier about ‘a tapestry of lies’ which surrounds us. President Reagan 

commonly described Nicaragua as a ‘totalitarian dungeon’. This was taken generally by 

the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But 

there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was 

no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No 

priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the 

 6 

government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were 

actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down 

the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that 

over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships. 

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the 

Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl 

regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop 

Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. 

Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible 

and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They 

died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, 

disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright. 

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years 

and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally 

undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty 

stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free 

education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. ‘Democracy’ had 

prevailed.  

But this ‘policy’ was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted 

throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.  

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military 

dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, 

Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala,  

El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 

1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.  

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take 

place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes 

they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you 

wouldn’t know it. 

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t 

happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have 

been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually 

talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical 

manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. 

It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis. 

 7 

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, 

indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is 

out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It’s a winner. Listen to all 

American presidents on television say the words, ‘the American people’, as in the 

sentence, ‘I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the 

American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he 

is about to take on behalf of the American people.’ 

It’s a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The 

words ‘the American people’ provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You 

don’t need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your 

intelligence and your critical faculties but it’s very comfortable. This does not apply of 

course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and 

women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US. 

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any 

point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or 

favour. It quite simply doesn’t give a damn about the United Nations, international law 

or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own 

bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain. 

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these 

words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days – conscience? A 

conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in 

the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people 

detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due 

process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in 

defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by 

what’s called the ‘international community’. This criminal outrage is being committed 

by a country, which declares itself to be ‘the leader of the free world’. Do we think 

about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They 

pop up occasionally – a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no 

man’s land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger 

strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding 

procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your 

throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said 

about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why 

not? Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay 

constitutes an unfriendly act. You’re either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up. 

 8 

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating 

absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary 

military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media 

and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and 

economic control of the Middle East masquerading – as a last resort – all other 

justifications having failed to justify themselves – as liberation. A formidable assertion 

of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of 

innocent people. 

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random 

murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it ‘bringing freedom 

and democracy to the Middle East’. 

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass 

murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have 

thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International 

Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the 

International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that 

matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the 

marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. 

We can let the Court have his address if they’re interested. It is Number 10, Downing 

Street, London. 

Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the 

back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before 

the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don’t exist. 

They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. ‘We don’t do body counts,’ 

said the American general Tommy Franks. 

Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British 

newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. ‘A grateful child,’ said 

the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of 

another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He 

was the only survivor. ‘When do I get my arms back?’ he asked. The story was dropped. 

Well, Tony Blair wasn’t holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated 

child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie 

when you’re making a sincere speech on television. 

The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in 

the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm’s way. The mutilated rot in their beds, 

some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds 

of graves. 

 9 

Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, ‘I’m Explaining a Few Things’: 

And one morning all that was burning, 

one morning the bonfires 

leapt out of the earth 

devouring human beings 

and from then on fire, 

gunpowder from then on, 

and from then on blood. 

Bandits with planes and Moors, 

bandits with finger-rings and duchesses, 

bandits with black friars spattering blessings 

came through the sky to kill children 

and the blood of children ran through the streets 

without fuss, like children’s blood. 

 

Jackals that the jackals would despise 

stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out, 

vipers that the vipers would abominate. 

 

Face to face with you I have seen the blood 

of Spain tower like a tide 

to drown you in one wave 

of pride and knives. 

 

Treacherous 

generals: 

see my dead house, 

look at broken Spain: 

from every house burning metal flows 

instead of flowers 

from every socket of Spain 

Spain emerges 

and from every dead child a rifle with eyes 

and from every crime bullets are born 

which will one day find 

the bull’s eye of your hearts. 

 

And you will ask: why doesn’t his poetry 

speak of dreams and leaves 

and the great volcanoes of his native land. 

 

Come and see the blood in the streets. 

Come and see 

the blood in the streets. 

Come and see the blood 

in the streets!* 

 

 10 

Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda’s poem I am in no way 

comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I quote Neruda because 

nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the 

bombing of civilians. 

I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on 

the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as ‘full spectrum 

dominance’. That is not my term, it is theirs. ‘Full spectrum dominance’ means control 

of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources. 

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 

countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don’t quite know 

how they got there but they are there all right.  

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two 

thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is 

developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever 

cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, 

are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who 

knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity – the possession and threatened 

use of nuclear weapons – is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We 

must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and 

shows no sign of relaxing it.  

Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably 

sickened, shamed and angered by their government’s actions, but as things stand they 

are not a coherent political force – yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we 

can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish. 

I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would 

like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can 

make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, 

winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously 

attractive, a man’s man. 

‘God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden’s God is bad. His 

is a bad God. Saddam’s God was bad, except he didn’t have one. He was a barbarian. 

We are not barbarians. We don’t chop people’s heads off. We believe in freedom. So 

does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom- 

loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate 

electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a 

 11 

dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral 

authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don’t you forget it.’ 

A writer’s life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don’t have to weep 

about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you 

are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a 

limb. You find no shelter, no protection – unless you lie – in which case of course you 

have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician. 

I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my 

own called ‘Death’. 

Where was the dead body found? 

Who found the dead body? 

Was the dead body dead when found? 

How was the dead body found? 

Who was the dead body? 

Who was the father or daughter or brother 

Or uncle or sister or mother or son 

Of the dead and abandoned body? 

Was the body dead when abandoned? 

Was the body abandoned? 

By whom had it been abandoned? 

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey? 

What made you declare the dead body dead? 

Did you declare the dead body dead? 

How well did you know the dead body? 

How did you know the dead body was dead? 

Did you wash the dead body 

Did you close both its eyes 

Did you bury the body 

Did you leave it abandoned 

Did you kiss the dead body 

 12 

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move 

a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of 

reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side 

of that mirror that the truth stares at us.  

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce 

intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our 

societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.  

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of 

restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man. 

 

 

* from Pablo Neruda Tercera Residencia, “Explico Algunas Cosas” in Selected Poems 

by Pablo Neruda. Edited and translated by Nathaniel Tarn. Jonathan Cape, London 1970. 

Used by permission of The Random House Group Limited.